Android leads in mobile ads; iPad ads jump 456 percent

Android OS, with its dozens of manufacturer partners, saw more total ad impressions than any other mobile OS in the third quarter of 2011. Android accounted for 56 percent of all impressions, according to Millennial Media’s Q3 Mobile Mix 2011 report out Tuesday. Apple’s iOS accounted for 28 percent of ads across all connected devices. But don’t count Apple out: From a single manufacturer perspective, its devices have the largest share of mobile ads.

Apple may have lost its crown as the most widely distributed mobile OS to Android, but it’s a the leading platform for developers and apparently advertisers, too. Though the iPhone has been largely responsible for that, the iPad has also seen skyrocketing growth for mobile ads in the last year.

As you can see in the chart, Apple devices represented 23 percent of mobile ads, the largest share of the 15 biggest mobile device makers, according to Millennial Media. The iPhone was responsible for a little over half of those impressions, and the iPad and iPod touch accounted for the rest, though Millennial didn’t breakdown the exact share of Apple’s tablet and touchscreen iPod.

Each Apple device still continues to grow too. In the last year, mobile ad impressions on the iPhone grew 60 percent, they grew 30 percent on the iPod touch, and a whopping 456 percent on the iPad.

As far as the competition goes, while Apple led all manufacturers with mobile ad share, HTC actually had the most devices on the list with six in the top 20 devices getting the most ad impressions. Each of those six devices are Android phones; Android accounted for 15 of the total top 20.

Across all platforms, the most popular app category in which to buy ads in was games, which grew to 34 percent of all application ad impressions.